


They Also Serve

by sylviarachel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Other, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John puts a lot of effort into convincing himself he dreamed it. Because the alternative is that Sherlock really is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Also Serve

It’s not real. It can’t be real.

He dreamed it. Yes, that’s it: a nightmare. Another nightmare. Just a bit more up-to-date than the rest.

John puts a lot of effort into convincing himself he dreamed it.

Because the alternative explanation is that he really did see it. See Sherlock slip his phone into his coat pocket and dive from the roof of Bart’s. See Sherlock lying on the pavement with blood pooling around his head. Look into Sherlock’s eyes and see no one looking back at him.

No. No, no, no. Impossible.

_Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

Well, how’s this for impossible: _I’m a fraud, John. I researched you. It was all faked._ No. He might be willing to swallow that explanation for the one incident – maybe – but he’s seen Sherlock do it dozens of times. Hundreds. It’s just not possible. And the _work_ involved … ! All that legwork, and he, John, certainly hadn’t done any of it.

And Harry. If he’d _researched_ John, even spent five minutes with his military file, he couldn’t have got Harry wrong. However fractured their relationship became, she was still his next of kin, still listed in his file as _Watson_ , _Harriet M._ Sherlock wouldn’t, couldn’t, have missed that.

No.

He’ll wake up in the morning and go down to the kitchen and open the fridge to find some god-awful science experiment in there, again, and Sherlock will be sitting there in that ridiculous dressing-gown, waiting for someone, anyone, else to make the coffee _and don’t think I’m falling for that trick with the sugar ever again, you deceitful sod_ and he’ll say, John, I’m _bored_. Find me a case, John! Or if not a case, then a crate of nicotine patches! I’m BORED, John! Do something! And I’ll say --

But when he wakes up, the flat is quieter than it should be, and when he goes down to the kitchen there is no one there, and John can’t bring himself even to open the fridge and he gives up trying to make coffee because he can’t stop his hands shaking and instead sits down in the nearest chair and doesn’t move for hours.

* * *

He tells Mrs Hudson he’s not _that_ angry but the truth is, the truth is …

He had a reason. Sherlock must have had a reason, and it wasn’t, it bloody well _wasn’t_ , that the whole thing was faked. _I’m not having that._ _But what’s left?_

John may not be a genius, he tells himself, but he is not stupid. He can work this out. _I’ve got to, haven’t I. Can’t leave the thinking to Sherlock anymore._

Sometimes he forgets, for half a minute at a time, forgets to hurt, and then like the horrifying little _click_ when a bloke steps on a landmine some small thing brings it back, the knowledge he’s been avoiding, and the pain descends. The anger. The bleak black _thing_.

_Think, John. For God’s sake. For Sherlock’s. This isn’t how the world should remember him, “Suicide of Fake Genius,” Christ. Think it through._

There’s got to be an explanation.

The jury in the Moriarty trial: they knew he was guilty, but he’d threatened their families, so they did what had to be done. _Sherlock always did what had to be done._

Well, except when he’d made John do it. _Arrogant git. Inconsiderate, selfish, exasperating wanker. Bloody incorrigible smart-arse. Calculating, heartless—_

_“Keep your eyes on me.”_ Christ _, Sherlock! How could you? It’s not bad enough you jumped off a fucking building, you had to make me_ watch _?_

So, all right. A little angry. 

* * *

But then he sees it. Sherlock does – _did, past tense, oh God_ – these apparently arbitrary things, but there’s always a reason. Always a _good_ reason, in that twisty Sherlockian way. Often not the reason other people might spot.

When Sherlock shouts at you at eleven at night and then makes you coffee in the morning, you might see an apology, but he’s conducting a psychological experiment.

When Sherlock suggests you take your date to the circus, and invites himself along, you might see truly appalling social skills ( _well, and you’d be right, wouldn’t you_ ) but he’s on the track of a smuggling ring.

When Sherlock does something to hurt you …

John remembers Molly Hooper’s face at that hideously awkward Christmas party, the completely genuine contrition in Sherlock’s voice when he realized, _finally_ , what he’d done. _Sherlock was thoughtless and insensitive and missing the part of his brain that’s meant to stop you saying every single thing you’re thinking the moment you think it, but he wasn’t cruel._

And making your best friend watch you die – telling him bald-faced lies and _ordering_ him to watch you die – is the most cruel act John can currently imagine.

_Therefore, he had a reason. Therefore …_

John sits up abruptly, staring at the blank nicotine-stained wall of Harry’s depressing bed-sit. _The jurors. It_ is _just like the jurors. Moriarty_ did _have something on Sherlock, and it_ wasn’t _that he was a fake._

* * *

One thing Sherlock was right about: John didn’t, couldn’t, go to Harry for help, because Harry had no help to give him. She still hasn’t, but John’s gone to stay with her anyway because wherever else he goes he’ll be surrounded by reminders of Sherlock.

Unfortunately, it seems he’s brought the reminders with him.

Coming home to find her brother passed out on the floor seems to do something to Harry. When John wakes up next morning, grateful for the extraordinarily bad hangover that distracts him from the other thing, he finds her emptying a bottle of vodka down the drain.

“I am going to a meeting,” she announces, “and you are going to see your therapist, John. I’ve made you an appointment, and you’re going if I have to drag you there myself.”

John is too astonished to argue.

* * *

“He was a bad boyfriend, John,” Harry tells him. Harry, who would never listen when John said _He’s not my boyfriend._ “He used you. He _endangered your_ _life_ , John, over and over and over. He _poisoned_ you. On purpose. Jesus.”

“He thought he was drugging me,” John corrects meticulously. “Not poisoning. And he wasn’t really. The drug wasn’t in the sugar after all.”

Then he realizes what he’s just said, that he’s taking Sherlock’s side of the argument and that it’s _completely fucking absurd_ , and he starts to laugh and can’t stop. Until Harry slaps him.

“I was happy, Harry,” he says at last. “It was all completely mad, but I was happy. You know I was.”

She stares as him as if he’s lost his mind. _She’s not wrong._

There’s another epiphany to be had from this conversation, but John isn’t ready for that one yet.

* * *

_Moriarty had something on Sherlock, and it wasn’t the thing they both pretended. Therefore …_

John remembers the pool. It’s not a good memory, and he always tried not to think about it, before. Before. Tried to look on the bright side – because there was a bright side, before. But now the good memories hurt like shrapnel wounds ( _and the limp’s back, by the way, Sherlock, what the hell does_ that _mean?_ ) and he finds himself reverting again and again to all the reasons falling into Sherlock Holmes’s orbit was a bad idea, because those memories don’t hurt quite as much, or in the same way.

Most friendships don’t involve being loaded up with HEs and marched at gunpoint into a deserted recreational facility and forced to speak the lines of some insane supervillain’s play-within-a-play, John reminds himself. Most people don’t have this kind of enemy, or bring this kind of trouble on their friends.

The trouble with dwelling on this particular unpleasant memory, it turns out, is that like the incident with Molly’s Christmas present, it’s revealing of something else entirely. Because if John remembers how and why he ended up as an unwilling suicide bomber, he also has to remember how that incident ended. Has to remember the look on Sherlock’s face when the penny dropped; has to remember the real, utterly genuine terror in his voice, _John. Are you all right, John_ , the weird irresistible intensity of that ice-water gaze.

_Not going there. Not. Going. There._

Harry’s right, of course, that Sherlock made John’s life extremely dangerous. She doesn’t realize how often Sherlock saved John’s life. She doesn’t realize what his life, so-called, was like during those weeks between Afghanistan and Baker Street. What meeting Sherlock saved him from.

_I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one._

Friends, yes. They were friends. And Sherlock wouldn’t have done this to John, who was his friend, his _one_ friend, because let’s be honest, who the hell else would put up with the sociopathic git, unless he honestly believe he had no other option.

Therefore …

John remembers the pool. The laser sights of the sniper rifles.

Remembers the hired assassins who suddenly took up residence in Baker Street, the two who saved Sherlock’s life and then died, the three who just as suddenly were gone the day after it happened. The phone call that lured him away from the lab just long enough to … just long enough. _Would Moriarty try the same trick twice?_ When it hadn’t worked the first time?

_If he could hurt Sherlock, discredit him … Yes, he’d try it._

John sees it all, it’s taken him a long time to get there but he sees it all now. Three assassins; three targets; three reasons for Sherlock to …

_I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one._

_And I left him alone for half an hour, and he-- and he--_

_And he killed himself to save us. Himself, and his reputation. For us. For me._

_For Christ’s sake, Sherlock! How_ could _you?_

 

* * *

“I’m going to kill him,” John tells Harry.

“John? Kill who?”

“Sherlock bloody Holmes. I’m going to kill him.”

It’s clear Harry doesn’t know what to do. “John,” she says cautiously, “you know he’s—”

“Yes, Harry.” An impatient gesture. “I know he’s dead. Do you know _why_ he’s dead, Harry?”

She starts to answer, to temporize probably, but he doesn’t let her.

“He’s dead because he bloody well wouldn’t ask for help when he needed it. Because he had to fucking _save_ everyone.”

Harry leans away from the savage anger in his voice. John doesn’t care. He tells her the whole story, with all the bits he’s left out every time before.

She looks at him for a long time. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I’m sorry for what I said about him, before. That he used you.”

“Oh, he did,” John assures her, with a bleak laugh. “Constantly. He needed me. Now nobody does. It drove me mad, and now I’d give anything to have it all back.

“I would have helped him,” he says. “If he’d asked.”

“You were going to single-handedly take down a master criminal?”

“I could have done _something_ ,” he insists. “I’d have taken a bullet, if that was what he needed. I’d have killed for him. I’d done it before. I’d have died for him. He _knew_ that. But he didn’t tell me, he didn’t ask me, he just … he just …”

“John.”

Harry’s voice is coming from an odd place, and he realizes she’s holding him, holding in his arms, stopping him from … what? There’s coffee all over the rickety little table, the newspaper’s soaked in it, the mug is in pieces. _Jesus, Harry, I’m sorry._

“I’m sorry, Harry. I’m sorry.”

_Sherlock, you bastard, I’m so sorry. I let you down, and I’m sorry._

“You loved him,” Harry says. “I know – I know – but love doesn’t have to make sense, John. It just _is_. When you’re willing to die for someone, John, that’s love. That’s what love _is._ You loved him, and he loved you.”

“We were friends. He was my friend. We weren’t-- we didn’t—”

“You can call it friendship if you like,” says Harry agreeably. She lets go of him and goes back to her own chair, folding her arms on the table in front of her. It seems they’ve agreed to ignore the mess. “I’m not talking about _sex_ , John. I’m not talking about lust – although if you ask me—”

“I am not. Asking. You.”

“Right, fine. Fine. I’m saying … Look, don’t torture yourself, okay? If you’re right about what happened, he thought you were worth it, and who are you to tell him he’s wrong? If he thought you were worth saving, what right have you got to just give up?”

“That-- makes no sense, Harry.”

Harry smiles, but sadly. “What have I just been saying? Love doesn’t have to make sense. It just is. I mean, look at us.”

A beat.

“I love you, Harry.”

She smiles at him again, still sadly. “I love you, too.”


End file.
